Quality Point Status

Accountability is a major concern for higher education officials in the US and beyond. There is increased pressure to retain and graduate students in order to satisfy key stakeholders such as board members and taxpayers. Students who fail academically comprise one population we can look to for improvement. This post will focus on a seldom-used measure to determine the status of undergraduate students who are in academic distress. The name of the measure is "quality point status." This measure is cited several times in higher eductaion literature as honor point deficiency (Schuster, 1971; Russell, 1982; Kinloch, Frost, & MacKay, 1993). For the purpose of this post, the measure has been renamed to reflect a negative, neutral, and positive nature. Negative quality point status reflects the number of quality points needed to restore the student’s grade point average to a 2.00. Prior to understanding quality point status, a brief description of the method for determining grade point average (GPA) is in order. A students GPA is determined by assigning a value to the letter grade earned in a course (e.g., A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1, and F=0) and multiplying this value by the number of credits assigned to the course. This calculation determines the number of quality points awarded per course. Subsequently, the sum of the quality points....


....divided by the sum of the credit hours attempted (for letter grade) determines the GPA. As such, the number of quality points earned by the student may have a value beyond serving as the denominator for the GPA calculation. For instance, a neutral quality point status (0) would indicate that the student maintains a 2.00 grade point average. A negative quality point status indicates a student maintains a grade point average of less than 2.00 and a positive quality point status indicates a student maintains a grade point average greater than 2.00.
Admittedly, this is a rather unremarkable statement as grade point average provides the same information; however, unlike grade point average, quality point status provides the decision maker with the magnitude (or level) of academic success or failure being experienced by the student. For example, a student who has 12 credit hours for grade would need 24 quality points to maintain a 2.00 GPA. If the student earns 21 quality points, they will possess a negative quality point status of -3. Russell (1984) provided the following example:

Actual: 1.75 GPA X 12 hours attempted = 21 quality points
Necessary: 2.00 GPA X 12 hours attempted = 24 quality points

Quality Point Status = -3 quality points

In comparison, a student who has completed 60 credit hours for grade with the same 1.75 grade point average would have a higher negative quality point status; thus, placing them in greater academic distress. For example:

Actual: 1.75 GPA X 60 hours attempted = 105 quality points
Necessary: 2.00 GPA X 60 hours attempted = 120 quality points

Quality Point Status = -15 quality points

The student with a -3 quality point status would need to complete one three credit course with a B or higher to achieve a 2.00 GPA. This situation is quite different for the student in the second example as they would need to make up five times as many quality points as the person in example one. These examples show the significant differences encountered by students, and therefore may be useful to administrators and academic advisors tasked with making reinstatement decisions. Although GPA and quality point status are related, quality point status provides a more accurate assessment of the difficulty confronted by the academically dismissed student.